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As I take another day to recover from the busy weeks of Christmas before I find words again…let me present:

Our house tonight.

It’s been a long week at our house. Sickness slowly passing from one child to the next, like watching milk inch across a tablecloth.  Add to that a wintry dull mix outside with no sun in sight to bring relief, and you’ve got itchy children and a very antsy mama.

I was holding out for Saturday.  A morning friend date to go shopping for some sparkling hot-mama clothes and a full on date with Mr. Darcy, Christmas party included, for Saturday night. Friday evening found the next morning’s plans canceled.  I saw in front of me another long day of being in the house, with the usual excursion to the grocery store. Saturday afternoon found a very cute and equally fussy baby who was breaking in a tooth. Cancel date in sparkly clothes, pencil in another 5 hours in, that’s right, the house.

This story ends well though.  Partly because Mr. Darcy is a patient man who could see I was feeling pinned down and he tried to build a little space around me. He gave me his understanding, and he brought me a Christmas tree. Secondly, because I have cool kids.  They adapted quickly to the change of plans for the evening and threw themselves into finding the perfect tree to bring home to mommy.  The lights, the candy canes, it brought back the old magic.  (It’s only honest to add that 3 strands of lights ended up dead and only the top of the tree is lit at the moment).  To fan the flame of magic that had begun, Mookie and I sat down at bedtime to read the first chapter of my favorite book.  She’s finally old enough to experience it with me, curled in our reading spot, something for just the two of us.

The other element that saved the night from crashing from bad to worse was a time to create.  Design, cut, arrange, paste, sit back and enjoy the creation while peeling the glue from my fingers.  It opens up my breathing, loosens my jaw, helps me to feel sane again.

Now if only I can figure out how to craft a sun of light and warmth and health for the rest of the winter months.

Note: The festive recycled cardboard wreath above was inspired by the idea found here and here.

My fingers are itching.  Restless.  Or maybe it’s my brain.

For the past two weeks I’ve been watching a television show on netflix.  Netflix, if you aren’t familiar, allows you to watch certain movies and shows on your computer with the click of a button.  Now if you know me even a little bit, you might know that I love to watch movies.  And I also love not to watch them, every night that is.  As far as tv goes, we haven’t had a tv show we’ve watched consistently in about 3 years and we only turn on the television to use the dvd player.  I feel like I’m wasting my time, my brain, my potential for reading a good book, if I sit and stare at a screen for too long.

With that bit of information, you’ll understand why it’s so completely odd that I’m watching episode after episode every night, sometimes until 2 in the morning.  Now let’s add in the further weird factor-the show is about football. Maybe you didn’t know about the movie/tv thing, but you probably did know that we are not a football family.  We’re the family that invite people over for a party and then find it’s Superbowl Sunday and we didn’t even know it was football season.  We’re the family that nod our heads mildly as my dad goes on and on about college vs. NFL, and who traded who, and the power of the Bulldogs.  We’re also the family that probably needs to acquire a football to toss with our 4 year old son so he atleast has the choice to be something other than an artist.

So when I’m not watching this show(that my husband watches with me) or trying to ignore the guilt of the accumulated screen hours, I do ask myself why. Why?

Back to the itching fingers.  Besides asking myself questions in the off hours, I also dream of projects.  While driving to p.e. or fixing mac and cheese, I compose blogs, dip my fingers in glue, fancy myself an artist.  But when the kids are tucked away, and an empty hour lies invitingly before me, I settle myself into the same spot on the couch and hit “next episode”.

I have actually come up with some answers.  Aside from being a well-made show, the characters are passionate.  About football, each other, what’s right and wrong, mostly about football.  And though I can’t relate to the football part, I’m drawn to the passion.  The first person to introduce me to passion was my 10th grade drama teacher.  With her mismatched socks and keds, her frumpy hair and long skirts, and her director’s attitude, she was passionate about theater and gave that gift to me at 14.  I studied theater, wrote stories, created things with my hands, because of the overwhelming desire to do so.  It’s in my blood now that I need to be passionate about whatever I’m doing. But with passion comes vulnerability, and with vulnerability, the possibility of failure.

Right now life is pretty busy.  From the time my eyes open until after 9pm, I’m serving the needs of the family.  In my stolen hours, I can choose between the safe, albeit artificial, passion of some football players, or the passion of something authentic in me that wants to work it’s way out.  With the chance to fall hard, also comes the chance to rise high.

They are the sun on a cloudy autum day,

the reason I can’t move from this town, unless it’s for a longer fall season,

a soothing melody of colors,

what ocean was to me for the first half of my life,

my comfortable,

goodbye for this year, it’s been a good one

* 3rd photo and final photo courtesy of mookie, age 8

Ideas for writing occur throughout my day.  No one told me that multi-tasking as a mother included the ability to sift through blog ideas while serving breakfast, wiping up spit-up, reading a book out loud, and listening to Schoolhouse Rocks.  Of course, composing sentences in my head does not make a posted blog with meditative thoughts and witty anecdotes.  Sadly, each day, several potential blogs fall to the wayside, only the strongest survive by 10pm and even the most persistent might not win out against a cozy couch and a netflix.  Here’s a few from the weekend:

1 When I Became My Mother or 10 Things I Hate About Shopping

2 The Battle Has Begun: Fighting For My Daughter’s Body Image

3 The Five Best Places To Kiss a Baby

4 Weird, Unsocialized, Homeschoolers: Here We Go Again

5 What I Wish Someone Had Told Me When I Was Almost 9

6 Laughing At the Days to Come: The Lord Teaches Me Through the Mouth of a Babe

7 Useful Skills Children Were Taught Back in the Day but Now They Play the Wii (or how I wished I’d learned to sew)

8 Forget the Kids, Let Me Tell You What I’ve Learned Since We Began Homeschooling: Finding a Wider World

9 Doing Something Creative Every Day and Yes, That Might Include Finger Painting

10 8 years Into Parenting and I Still Know Next to Nothing

Which one should I have written?

I thought if I ever visited Narnia, I would be on the lookout for Aslan, having tea with Mr Tumnus, and taking sewing lessons from Mrs. Beaver.  But when I finally got there, I had to turn my back on Aslan and follow the White Witch.  What else is a mom to do when her daughter is an ogre in the witch’s army?  Become a fan!

This week Mookie went to drama camp.  This girl has been directing plays and making props since she was two(okay maybe younger), but I have to say it was exciting to see that after spending time doing improv games and acting out scenes, she still loves it.  At the end of the week, she had her first ever stage performance in The Lion, the Witch, and Wardrobe.

So we got a little excited for her.  And donned some appropriate clothing for the big night.

We made these shirts the night before the show, at around 11pm .  Mr. Darcy was sick with a cold and sounded like Darth Vader, and still he not only came up with a slogan about ogre underpants, but actually put it on his shirt to wear out in public. It was hands down the family favorite.  Now that’s a father’s true love.

The next day some friends came over to help micah transform into her ogre-ness. She’s never had anyone take the time to work out a hairstyle, paint her nails, and do her make-up.  What a day.

Even mom and sister got a tattoo.

A defeated night for the witch’s army, a victory for Mookie-she’ll always remember her first play.

Norman Rockwell, Edgar Degas, Grandma Moses.  These are a few of the artists we’ve met this year since adding Picture Study to our learning time.  Picture Study is a Charlotte Mason inspired idea.  

At our house, picture study looks like this.  

• I pick an artist and find a nice large book containing his/her paintings from the library.
• Each week, for six weeks, we look at one piece of art from the book.  I keep it displayed prominently in our family room, so that as we pass by it seeps into our memory.  
• Sometime during the week, I take the book down and we look at the painting together.  We spend five minutes trying to remember as many things as we can about the painting and then I close the book.  Everyone takes turn sharing what they remember.  We open the book and see how we did and add elements we might have forgotten.  
• Like the click of camera, now we have added the painting to the gallery in our mind.
• If I find interesting books or videos about the artist, we add those as well.
• Every 6 weeks, we start a new artist.

This takes us up about 10 to 15 minutes in our whole week, and already we have begun building a gallery of great works.

This week, I felt inspired by another element of picture study added by this family.

I confess, I was nervous about M and J’s reactions.  ”I can’t draw that, ” seemed the least of the worries.  Falling to the floor and giving up completely because they couldn’t BE the artist was more of my concern.

So last night I showed the girls samples from the blog above and we talked about how we weren’t trying for perfect and all of our sketches would look different.

Today we tried it and it went great!  I know that having this positive experience is going to make the next time that much more fun and enthusiastic.  Here are the girl’s work side by side with our artist’s painting of the week, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Marc Chagall.

I’m grabbing my moment.  

If I keep my eyes on the screen, my only goal to compose thoughts into words,  I can pretend that this is all I should be doing.  

Outside of this screen there are the other things calling.  The right things.  The responsible things.  The things that, even if I were to devote my day to them will still be waiting for me in a few minutes, tomorrow, and next week.  

Beyond the screen bits of our life lay ground into the carpet, waiting to be vacuumed. No, I won’t look.  

Around the corner awaits the school room where our learning has spread across the surfaces.  Steady now.

See how easy it is to wander back to those other things?  Shouldn’t I be doing them instead of stealing this moment away to sit with my new macbook and write?  

Maybe not.  The Lord had called me to be a wife.  A mother.  A teacher.  A good steward of our finances.  It ’s my job to keep a warm hand on our home to provide a (relatively)clean and pleasant place to live.  That’s enough to fill up 48 hours in a day, so how could I possibly believe that He’s also called me to give into these creative longings and write?  After years of worrying about balance and how to look like every other mom, I’m giving myself a hearty yes.  

Will I ever be the writer with luxury to stumble out of bed, grab coffee, and spend hours lingering over words?  Or the late night writer determined to get ideas to page?  Right now I value sleep too much.  I really don’t know the answer past today. Today, in this moment, my moment, I’ve got my blank page(well, not so blank now) and my thoughts and until the time that baby girl wakes up, or the boys get back or the girls arrive home, I’ll have my moment.

Maybe it’s not a stolen moment.  Maybe, it’s a gift.

Here’s a little peek into today’s art lesson at the Guest Academy of Great Children.

Today we learned about form vs shape.  Shape is a flat object, whereas form has depth and width like a sculpture.  To illustrate form, the girls created these great animal figures.

The art lesson came straight from our art curriculum, Artistic Pursuits.  We started the program this year and we do a lesson a week.  The kids ask if we can do one every day.

Now, we are a crafty family, as previously suggested, so why, when they are always creating things anyway, did I spend money on curriculum?  I’ve always enjoyed artistic pursuits, but couldn’t tell you a thing about color theory or how to paint a nice watercolor.  I wanted to encourage their confidence and freedom, but also give them some good, knowledgeable information to strap on and then take imaginative leaps and bounds.  

This book has short lessons that are designed to introduce concepts such as

• Artists Compose
• Artists Communicate
• Artists Make Portraits
• Artists see Line

Almost all lessons include:

• 1 page describing the concept
• 1 page that shows a great piece of art to illustrate the concept
• 1 page that gives the instructions for the hands on art lesson

We invested in some quality art supplies and it’s all taken off from there…

Let me be clear that all art lessons don’t go smoothly.  I have two children with completely different approaches to any artistic effort.  One very similar to her mom, one lines up with her Dad.  Which means one likes the detailed process of “how to”. And the other would by pass all instruction and only learn by doing.  One doesn’t like any specific parameters, the other thrives under them.

So there can be frustration amongst the watercolor crayons and tissue paper. But I have empathy, because I still get frustrated with my own attempts to translate a vision from head to paper, or computer, or canvas.

So we try to breathe.  Respect each other’s different styles.  Look at the next small step, instead of the big goal of the lesson.  And then magic happens.

Micah started out unexcited about this lesson.  About five minutes later this is what you would have heard in my house:

“Hey, I like to cut and fold things, I do all this stuff anyway, I think this is going to be a better project than I thought.”

She’s responsible for the lion above-came up with all the details on her own(the book only showed a standard dog with the invitation to turn it into other animals).

Jael wanted to make a frog and was sure that none of the basic parts to the form would work for her idea.  She didn’t want me to assist in any way, even when she got frustrated.  She plugged away, cutting and shaping, and soon showed us the frog above.  After that, she was ready to work on my animal, too. And soon you heard 

“I’m the best at doing this kind of work!”

“Jael, can’t we just say that we are all great artists in our family?”

*This Book

Escaping into the Open: the Art of Writing True by Elizabeth Berg

It’s always nice to pick up a new book on writing, though I don’t know if it’s good to read it right before bed.  It might be stimulating my thoughts and contributing to my lack of sleep!

*This Blog

WordGirl

What a gift to visit my friend Shannon’s blog and track her thoughts of creativity, art, writing, and God in the midst.  I feel like I get to tap into her in a whole new way.

*This Artist

Grandma Moses

The girls asked to study a “girl artist” for our next 6 weeks of picture study.  I found Grandma Moses and I like this lady!  Her paintings feel so free, a bit whimsical, and they make me smile!  The way I’d like to feel when creating art.

*The Library

Oh the library!  How I love thee, let me count the ways.  I think it’s my favorite place to go.  A place of surprises and a sore back from always carrying out more than I can handle.  This week’s goodies include some Arctic books for homeschool, the writing book above, 3 new fiction books with pretty covers, and a couple of cookbooks.  Truly, my heart starts beating a little faster as I walk toward the door, where so many unexpected gifts await.

*These Changes

Big changes are happening.  We are painting over the lovely garden that I first painted for Micah 7 years ago when I was 7 months pregnant with our 2nd child. Gone are the oversized flowers and in comes the butter yellow to provide a backdrop for both the girls and the boy as they bunk together and make room for the baby sister on the way.  

Change, specifically, change in the house, brings all kinds of emotions. On the one hand I’m creating art and picture frames and curtains in my head, rearranging the canvas of a room into new and pleasing pictures.  On the other hand, the process of moving and changing includes a period of disorganization and working through clutter and how to make small spaces work for big purposes.  All of that can drive me nuts!  But the real truth is, I love to move things around and pleasantly discover new ideas for old places.  And creating the living space for this little one makes me happy. My husband, on the other hand, has had to dish out extra doses of mercy upon my frustration and urgency in the projects!